


stalled

by 1213659 (orphan_account)



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationship, Car breakdown, Kissing, M/M, Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23689240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/1213659
Summary: "What would you say to me if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?" Jaehyun asks quietly.The question is heavier than Sangyeon expects. He is glad the interior of the car is too dim to be able to discern anything in Jaehyun's expression.
Relationships: Lee Jaehyun | Hyunjae/Lee Sangyeon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	stalled

When Sangyeon’s car breaks down at the roadside he can appreciate the situation for what it is. He feels lucky that there are no other cars around when the engine suddenly dies on a straightish stretch of road. It is lucky that there is nobody else around to crash into them. It is unlucky though because whilst Sangyeon manages to work out that the battery is dead, there are no other cars around to stop and help out with some jump cables. 

It is also unlucky because Sunwoo gets it into his head that Sangyeon is doing this on purpose just because he's mad about losing his phone at the amusement park today. If Sangyeon would ever plan to take a carload of people into the middle of the woods to get murdered, he likes to think he'd choose a more docile bunch than Jaehyun and the kids. 

"I bet this is your M.O.," Sunwoo accuses, the light from Hyunjun’s phone glinting in his wide eyes, "you build up trust with a bunch of people over a few years and then take them into the middle of the woods to kill them and then you start all over again somewhere else with new friends to kill."

"Hold on, I'm the murderer in the situation?" Sangyeon asks. 

"You are a creepy weirdo loner so that checks out," Jaehyun says brightly. 

"I'm not a murderer. How old do you think I am if I have done this before?" 

"Pass," Jaehyun says helpfully. The only reason Sangyeon doesn't throttle him is the fact that it wouldn't help his case to attack someone whilst trying to prove his innocence. 

"Eric, they're joking. I'm not going to kill anyone."

"Who's joking?" Sunwoo shrieks. 

"Don't worry, Eric, I volunteer to die first," Hyunjun says without looking up from his phone. 

"Hyunjun, I love you, but please be quiet."

Hyunjun does stop talking so Sangyeon is grateful for that much in his dark car in the middle of a deserted carriageway. 

Hyunjun is less helpful later by deciding that he, Eric, and Sunwoo should go in search of sustenance and phone signal out of the canopy of ancient trees. 

Jaehyun's point of, "I already have phone signal," turns out to be useless twenty minutes after being on hold to a breakdown service. Jaehyun gets into an argument with the call centre agent whilst also lambasting Sangyeon’s stupidity for not taking out roadside breakdown cover of his own. The call is disconnected before Jaehyun manages to go onto depth about the reasons he refuses to pay for something like this. 

"Why didn't you just pass the phone to me? Obviously I'd pay! It is my car!" 

Jaehyun looks put out at that. He blinks dumbly at his phone and then back at Sangyeon. He doesn't say aloud that he realises he is wrong but Sunwoo does enough of that for all of them whilst they are on hold again and Sangyeon’s card gets declined. 

Jaehyun doesn't even get back on his high horse when it turns out they are stranded. He simply fetches the torches from the glove compartment and passes them to the kids in the back. 

"Make sure you walk against the flow of traffic and don't walk more than a metre wide of the roadside. Don't do anything dangerous to get someone's attention and make sure you ask smart questions before you even think about getting into a stranger's car," Jaehyun instructs. "Even if you get desperate, don't walk more than twenty minutes in one direction. If you don't find anyone on the road within twenty minutes just come straight back. And don't approach cars which are already stopped."

"That's so many rules," Eric points out. 

"What if one of us needs to pee?" Sunwoo asks. "I assume you want us to hold hands when we're walking and to look both ways, but are we allowed to move away from the roadside to pee?" 

"No peeing," Jaehyun says seriously.

"Don't say that," Eric groans. "You're making me need to wee."

"Think of something else. Hyunjun, you're in charge of making sure nobody goes into the woods to pee."

"I don't want this job," Hyunjun says in a voice that melts Sangyeon’s heart. But Sangyeon isn't going to argue against Jaehyun when he is starting to worry that the woods all around could be hiding all manner of dangers. 

Hyunjun is stuck with his job of keeping everyone away from the deep and scary woods and the kids set off. Before they're even out of sight Eric has been startled by both Hyunjun and Sunwoo jumping out at him. Somehow it seems too late to suggest a different configuration to split the group. Bringing it up to Jaehyun might make it look like a bigger issue than it is. 

This is fine. Sangyeon has spent plenty of time alone with Jaehyun, perhaps more than anybody realises. This should be easy. 

Without the distraction of a phone Sangyeon is bored. He can't even switch on the radio on account of his car battery running dry. Occupying himself with his thoughts is the wrong sort of activity at a time like this. Sangyeon attempts to strike up a conversation. 

"Do you think the kids will find help?" 

Jaehyun shrugs in the passenger seat. "Dunno."

"Today was good. We should do it again some time."

"Maybe."

"Do you reckon we should plan a trip secretly and surprise the kids?" 

"If you want."

"I get the hint. I'll shut up now."

Jaehyun finally looks at Sangyeon, sodden kindling rather than the dry light of reciprocation. The dense dark deepens when Jaehyun locks his phone and drops it onto the dashboard. He says, "You don't get it at all."

Maybe he's right, but Sangyeon doesn't know what else he is supposed to be understanding. The silence stretches on and there still isn't another car in sight. Sangyeon might be waiting too long for the kids to return. 

And then Jaehyun speaks into the silence. "Let's play a game."

As hesitant as Sangyeon is, he doesn't have anything better to do. He agrees to play the game. 

Jaehyun asks a question, a stupid question about what Sangyeon would choose if he could only eat food of one colour for the rest of his life. Sangyeon settles on red(ish) and returns the question. He comes up with his own question that doesn't mean a thing and he finds out the very useless fact that Sangyeon wishes he invented marshmallows. 

The questions and answers volley back and forth over the realm of absurdity until Jaehyun gets stuck on a question. None of this is anything that requires too much thought but Sangyeon supposes they have exhausted all the most meaningless things to ask. 

Sangyeon closes his eyes and leans against the headrest. It shouldn't be too long before the kids arrive and a genius solution might come to him now that Jaehyun had him forcing his brain to think for the sake of being silly. But he hears Jaehyun stir and he cracks his eyes open to squint into the nothingness curiously. 

"What would you say to me," Jaehyun asks quietly, the hush of his voice blaring in Sangyeon’s ears from an arm-length away, "If you knew you were going to die tomorrow?" 

The question is an even heavier one than Sangyeon expects and he is glad the interior of the car is too dim to be able to distinguish any changes in expression. Sangyeon can't see what Jaehyun looks like right now and that is fine because it means that, for all his baited breath, Jaehyun doesn't know exactly how densely the question has lodged itself in Sangyeon’s chest. 

The two of them have history that they manage to ignore well enough for the sake of everyone else. Friendships flourish because of the sacrifices of pride. Sangyeon likes the fact he has acted maturely for long enough that being around Jaehyun constantly feels natural. Their mutual friends don't have to choose and Sangyeon doesn't need to allow pettiness to fester. He doesn't need to pretend not to miss someone. 

But Sangyeon isn't sure why Jaehyun would jolt this careful pattern of civility quite so hard. They have made this new proximity work precisely because they won't talk about it. Anything they had before is a secret that they have kept between two. Nobody needs to know or worry or bring it up for the sake of being careless. Jaehyun doesn't have an excuse. He can't claim carelessness over something he has agreed to stay silent on. 

"That's a big question," Sangyeon remarks. The quiver of his resolve sounds too obvious in the dark. He must be a better actor in the light. 

"Yeah."

Jaehyun knows what he is asking and Sangyeon supposes the boredom which births hypotheticals like this should be satiated. Sangyeon sighs. "I wouldn't say anything."

"Nothing?" Jaehyun immediately asks. Too quick, too close. Sangyeon feels his own breath struggle through a shudder. He tries again, shallow inhale, and hopes he remembers how normal felt when he was successfully ignoring the past. 

"Nothing," Sangyeon steadily agrees. 

"Why? Because I'm just like everybody else?" 

Sangyeon shakes his head before he realises Jaehyun wouldn't understand much from that in the murkiness of night. "If you were someone else I might be tempted to say something. But I wouldn't want to do that to you. If I knew I was going to die tomorrow I wouldn't want you to get suspicious of me treating you any differently when I couldn't do it again. I wouldn't want you to remember me for any special reason when we've come so far in putting things behind us. I would just want you to live your life without dwelling on a person who was gone."

Jaehyun scoffs. "Of course."

"Of course what?" 

"You're such a martyr," Jaehyun says. "I should have expected something like that from you. Like you think you're already special enough that I-- someone wouldn't be able to move on from your perfect and wonderful memory."

"It's your stupid game. What about you then?" 

Jaehyun quiets. No more quiet mocking. Sangyeon swats his arm. 

"Oi, you can't just ask me a question and not answer it yourself."

Jaehyun only takes a moment more to ruminate on that. He must have known this was coming when he thought up the question in the first place. Eventually, he says, "I'd tell you I want to kiss you one more time."

The words douse Sangyeon in freezing candour.

He can move but his skin is numb as he stretches over the handbrake and kisses Jaehyun, cautious and light enough he can convince himself that it doesn't even count. 

Jaehyun's breath is weak, light, against Sangyeon’s mouth when they part. He says, "I won't die tomorrow."

"Good," Sangyeon says. 

They must have some time and however long it is, Sangyeon is going to pretend he's allowed Jaehyun once more. The handbrake digs into Sangyeon’s stomach and the gearstick makes him hold his leg at an awkward angle but Jaehyun is kissing him back, gripping tight with fistfuls of Sangyeon’s t-shirt. It is a first kiss, first since they decided they wouldn't work out, and a last kiss, an epilogue of memories they daren't share, and it is stupidity condensed. 

Sangyeon has missed Jaehyun like this, determined to devour each exhale to a soul that is spared to him. Jaehyun pulls Sangyeon ever closer but Sangyeon isn't sure how to exist much closer than this when he can't feel further than the tightening pull of his t-shirt being wound into handfuls of Jaehyun’s desperation. 

By the time Sangyeon pulls away, flops back into his own seat Jaehyun's fingers have released their stiff grip. No longer anchored against Jaehyun, Sangyeon thinks it would be nice to taste almost-like again. But he's drifting too far against the prickling of skin too charged with irritation. 

Saying nothing would be better. Sangyeon just can't help that he wants a reason to hate Jaehyun and escape the temptation of reaching out when he knows he can't. 

The car is silent aside from the uneven breathing between them. Sangyeon tries to peer through the dark at Jaehyun, disperses the veil of discretion with the odd longing filling up spaces in Sangyeon’s chest which never existed before now. 

Sangyeon hates Jaehyun. His fingers find Jaehyun's in the dark, too hot and clammy, and he squeezes as tightly as he can for the briefest of seconds. 

Already Sangyeon can tell that they'll do this again. He allows the guilt to well up to the back of his throat in the time before he thinks he can see Hyunjun, Sunwoo and Eric return. He releases Jaehyun's hand entirely but his lungs ache to breathe without the densely pooling regret of want. 

In the erratic wobbling of torchlight shining through the windscreen, Sangyeon thinks he sees Jaehyun smile. In the next flash of a careless beam the expression is gone. 

Sangyeon can keep a secret. He's done it before. He can be patient. Sangyeon takes a breath and prepares himself to tell the kids it is fine that their search was fruitless. They can try something different and Sangyeon can convince himself that he isn't stalling back into habits he'd sworn himself off. 

**Author's Note:**

> i am struggling with the 5th version of the rich wet milk fic so i decided to try writing something lighthearted to remind myself how to write. that also didn't work out but it is all practice.


End file.
